662 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



where the site was originally located the remains of the vessels 

 were found. 



These two islands are virtual archaeological treasure houses 

 which, when thoroughly examined, will undoubtedly produce 

 many interesting finds. 



ACCLIMATIZATION. 



By WILLIAM Z. RIPLEY, 



ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF SOCIOLOGY AND ECONOMICS IN THE MASSACHUSETTS INSTITUTE OF 



TECHNOLOGY. 



nnHERE is no question of greater significance for European 

 civilization than the one which concerns the possibility of its 

 extension over that major part of the earth which is yet the 

 home of barbarism or savagery. The rapid increase of the Aryan 

 populations is more and more forcing it to the forefront as a 

 great economic problem. No longer is it merely a scientific and 

 abstract problem of secondary importance as contributory to the 

 theories of the unity or plurality of the human race.* It has to- 

 day become a matter of peculiar significance for the present gen- 

 eration of men, and the old abstractions, which did so much to 

 confuse its students, are laid aside, f The substantial unity of the 

 species having become an accepted fact along with the doctrine 

 of evolution, the migration and consequent acclimatization of the 

 various branches of the parent stock follow as a matter of course. 

 The modern problem plainly stated is this : First, can a single 

 generation of European emigrants live ? and, secondly, living, can 

 they perpetuate their kind in the equatorial regions of the earth ? 

 Finally, if the Aryan race is able permanently so to sustain itself, 

 will it still be able to preserve its peculiar civilization in these 

 lands ; or must it revert to the barbarian stage of modern slav- 

 ery of a servile native population, which alone in those climates 

 can work and live ? An area of fertile lands six times as great 

 as that cultivated by the people of Europe to-day stands waiting 

 to absorb its surplus population. J But its point of saturation 



* Revue mensuelle de 1'Ecole d'Anthropologie, i, p. 129 ; Virchow, in Verhandlungen der 

 Berliner Gesellschaft fiir Anthropologie, Ethnologic und Urgeschichte, 1885, p. 202. 



\ The French distinction between " acclimateraent " and " acclimatation " is practically 

 an illustration of these two phases of the question. Vide Bulletin de la Societe d'Anthro- 

 pologie, Paris, v, p. 781. Our National Department of Agriculture has become so im- 

 pressed with the importance of this matter that special investigations are being prosecuted, 

 and a climatological journal is promised. 



% In Proceedings of the Royal Geographical Society, January, 1891, p. 27, are maps, re- 

 produced from a paper by Mr. Ravenstein before the British Association for the Advance- 

 ment of Science at Leeds, of lands open for settlement. Vide also map in Transactions of 

 the Seventh International Congress of Demography and Hygiene, x, opp. p. 163, of lands im- 



